Pinterest in correlation with other websites #1

I don’t know about you, but I can recall more than one time that I sit in front of the computer – trying extremely hard to think of something – anything – to pin.

That’s when I decided to do something that seemed a little crazy – but it will require a little back knowledge. Please keep in mind while reading this – this is entirely my account on the subject, and shouldn’t be taken as hard fact. My opinions of all of these websites were strongly shaped by all of the teams I was a part of, and I didn’t even join them until October (Hence the october start date O.o).

Do you remember (I’ll say about) October/ November/December of this year when the whole fad was Stumbleupon?

If you were on Etsy and you didn’t hear of stumbleupon, it was a bit like pinterest, you were bound to eventually.

Most ‘random’ and ‘chat’ teams started out with simply threads dedicated to the subject, as a bit of fun, and before long there were entire teams devoted to ‘Stumbling’. It was actually a bit of a game, as SOON as you mentioned stumbling in a thread, someone would ask and you would hook them in…. With that they would introduce it to a new person and so on ETC.

One thing I notice with StumbleUpon vs. Pinterest – I think shop owners had more fun promoting their items, however nobody had as much fun discovering them. I just remember the talk, and the threads, shop owners just seemed to have more fun with the actual promotion of their products. Just an observation.

You may be asking – What happened to this fairy tale?

StumbleUpon’s old logo in comparison to it’s new logo.

Well – Stumbleupon got a huge update over my Christmas break. When I returned I was the only idiot starting “OFFICIAL JANUARY STUMBLEUPON THREAD” as everybody had scrambled to move on and I didn’t get the memo. Nobody liked the updates, and as they rolled out (and rolled back the “Change to original” option) people just sort of left. People also started realizing that all the stumbleupon views that your items got were entirely arbitrary and therefor meant nothing by way of promotion except maybe a joy of seeing that you had 700 more views in a day then you usually would. All of this was topped off with the fact StumbleUpon became over ran by many raunchy porn addicts – and it was all over for SU.

StumbleUpons new interface.

Sure – hard core, devoted, or general promotion teams still use stumbleupon as a viable promotional source – but for the general Etsy shop owner, housewife, or web surfer it was gone.

At the time, there were two major competitors, while I can’t speak on a large scale, at least in all of the teams I was associated with, those were Wanelo and, predictably, Pinterest. All the self righteous noobs (Okay, read me) started an account on all of the potential competitors, thinking I’ll keep up with all of them no matter what happens. (See how long that lasted? I don’t even know what my wanelo password is…).

Which brings me to today. Another night, out of ideas of what to pin, when I saw glaring at me a little “Stumble” button that I never got around to removing. I typed in the subject of my pinboard (In this case), “History” and found a TON of extremely interesting articles that could eventually be pinned. Then it dawned on me – Stumbleupon is virtually useless on it’s own, but used WITH pinterest is an extremely powerful tool. I couldn’t imagine a better way to gain followers than to always be the first to discover the most odd, interesting, intriguing, new, and otherwise would have never been found articles?

An example of StumbleUpons new add on for Chrome.

I should interject something- as a consumer and web browser, both of these websites did the exact same service. They helped you discover items on the web and surf the internet. The method in which they do them are extremely different. Pinterest takes the virtual magazine approach, and Stumble took the literal, enter a subject you like and it randomly generates a website approach.

To get to my final point – I feel like savvy pinners should create stumbleupon accounts. Even if you don’t stumble anything, the discovery opportunities are amazing. Stumbleupon allows you to generate original pins (As in, not repins from other boards) and discover relevant information.

As far as signing up it’s pretty straight forward. There are no real hints that I could offer you, and since you don’t actually need to stumble anything the only tip I can offer is this – Don’t get caught up in stumbling. Only use it for the purpose of discovering items for your Pinterest, which is the real focus here. Trust me, you won’t feel as cheap as it sounds you will. Stumbling can be addicting, and, can lead to another waste of time.

As you can see – from here you can fill out the short form (And reply to the usual confirmation email) or use Facebook.

What exactly is it? What do you do?

Stumbleupon is a discovery website, you can find more information/links on it’s actual website, but, essentially you can download the website bar (or, if you don’t want, you can just use the website directly) to type in a subject of a pin board and hit “Enter” or if your using the bar, “Stumble” – As “I’m feeling Lucky” on Google, it will automatically generate a website. You can keep doing this until you find what you want. The only button you need to worry about is the “Stumble” button. The “Like” button takes you to a page where you add that web page to the stumble database if it hasn’t been discovered before – not a good use of time.

You may notice the #1 in the post title – and that is because I think I see future potential here. In the future, you can expect to see how you can use Pinterest with other websites to grow your content/followers.

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About DeweysNook

I'm Victoria, leader of the Pin Me team, which is a cooperative / co op Etsy team - http://www.etsy.com/teams/11864/pin-me
I'm also the designer/manager/owner at Dewey's Nook, which sells keepsakes inspired by the old world and many unique items.
deweysnook.etsy.com
I further own/manage Clover's Books, a currently under construction antiquarian book shop on etsy, selling affordable books, many over 100 years old.
cloversbooks.etsy.com
My avatar is Dewey Dunkin, the namesake of Dewey's Nook.
Photo taken by me :)